


Cleaving the bone

by belantana



Category: Spooks | MI-5
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-09-14
Updated: 2010-09-14
Packaged: 2017-10-22 17:44:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,814
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/240816
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/belantana/pseuds/belantana
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Zoe, during <em>Persephone</em>. [series 3 spoilers.]</p>
            </blockquote>





	Cleaving the bone

**Author's Note:**

> Written for delgaserasca's [Late Summer Ficathon](http://community.livejournal.com/spooky_doings/452786.html) (♥). Prompt and title from _Judith_ by Vicki Feaver. Originally posted [@eljay](http://belantana.livejournal.com/57228.html).

_Wondering how a good woman can murder  
I enter the tent of Holofernes_

 

 

The shame of it hurt most, at first. She'd thought she'd found happiness and had had the audacity to flaunt it in everyone's faces. The phone calls, the flowers on her desk, for god's sake. Of course it would end like this.

Zoe supposed she should be thankful that at least she didn't have to break the news to everyone. Danny had taken care of that. She'd come back to work to sympathetic looks and whispers that broke off when she entered the room.

She cornered him in the corridor. "I see you've taken it upon yourself to spread the news."

Danny looked hurt. "I only told Sam."

"Yeah, that was calculating. Wildfires look sluggish in comparison."

"Were you planning on keeping it a secret? Everyone's going to find out anyway."

She bristled. "I know. It's just – would you like me to spread the news about how you spent _your_ weekend, Danny?"

She didn't say _killing a man_ , but she might as well have for the look on his face. "That operation is classified. Adam said not even to – "

"Jesus, I _know_ what Adam said."

She gave up.

 

 

The shame, also, of what Danny had done because she couldn't. In some moments so sharply that she wished she'd had the chance to kill the man herself just for the fucking competition of it.

 

 

"New op," Adam announced like nothing had happened. "Big one. Meeting room."

Zoe, who'd expected to be sidelined for her failure, found herself memorising names and faces in the Turkish mafia and practising her German on Ruth, who glanced up nervously every time they mentioned men or music or flowers as if half-expecting Zoe to burst into tears.

"It was my fault," Zoe confided finally, when she couldn't stand any more and decided in a split second to be charitable rather than exasperated. "I'm the one made it all into a game. I mean, all I talked about was the bloody job. Made it all sound like a James Bond film. No wonder Will didn't take it seriously."

Ruth smiled, but looked unconvinced. Zoe's attempt at lightheartedness had only made her feel drier. Christ, she was turning into Tessa.

And anyway, she _was_ in a James Bond film. Harry pulling contacts at casinos, Malcolm and Colin's magic roulette wheel. She paraded the new dress across the grid on Adam's instruction, her haughty legend enough of an excuse to glare daggers at him for it. She'd like to see Harry ordering Adam to swan around in revealing costumes for everyone's amusement. But then he'd probably enjoy himself.

She took the dress home, against regulations. Being flippant about regulations was another thing she could blame on this legend. Danny was out. She put on the dress, all cream silk and curves. Took a photo in the mirror for Will, _Casino Royale_ style. Deleted it. Curled up on the bed and cried.

 

 

Sam, cheerful as ever, seemed convinced that Zoe was just in a bit of a sulk and could be shaken out of it with reminders of the male attention she was getting from other quarters. If Sam winked at her one more time she would probably scream. She wondered there was a similar plan behind Adam's getting her to parade the dress.

"You're accent's still not right," Ruth said. "Your vowels are Austrian."

She'd thought the forgery suite would be a safe place for a cry, but Malcolm was there, just sitting at the empty table with some photos in his hands. He looked up when she entered and smiled slightly in greeting, but he didn't move or ask her what she needed or do any of the polite things Malcolm normally did.

She sat anyway, after a pause. Malcolm twitched the photos as if about to hide them from view, then stopped himself.

"Who's that?"

"Someone I haven't seen for a long time. Years, actually."

He looked at the photos again, then up at her, finding a smile finally. Zoe blinked in surprise, ashamed at the realisation of his grief.

"I'm sorry, Malcolm." Not sure what she was apologising for.

He shook his head. "I suppose I should consider it good news. I thought he was dead."

The photos were unclear enough that she didn't want to look closer. She felt cold suddenly, then frightened, then tired. Jesus, all she'd lost was a husband she didn't even have yet. What was she complaining about? She got up and left without a word.

 

 

Explore all our options, Harry said. _All our options_. She nodded, professional, expressionless. Was this a second chance? Zoe, we understand your failure to carry out your last assassination was through no fault of your own, but if you are to develop mysterious seasickness in this op you will of course understand that we would be extremely fucking suspicious.

Always _we_ now, the two of them. Adam was careful to speak to her like a colleague but Tom even in his furies had never ganged up on her like this.

"I understand," she said, and she did. She shouldn't be on an op this important on the back of a failure. Let alone on the back of a personal crisis which had threatened the security of the whole section. (Will, you bastard, she thought, needing suddenly to blame him; how could you have made this worse than it already is.)

This op should not be hers. Harry had pulled strings to give it to her. A second chance. This time, Zoe, pull the trigger.

She nearly thanked him.

 

 

It wasn't as if the flat felt empty. It wasn't as if she'd even lived with Will – she'd lived with Danny, and he was still here. She let the dishes pile in the sink so he'd shout at her but he didn't.

She'd already given away the shoes she'd bought for the wedding. Now she took down the photograph on the fridge, the two of them being obnoxiously happy at the beach or somewhere. But the empty space on the fridge caught her eye more often than the photograph had. She put a bill there. It was a quote for the catering. She took it down and put up the surveillance photographs of Ozal and Celenk.

Do you MI5 take Zoe Reynolds to be your lawful wedded wife, she thought, and then she poured herself another shot of vodka.

 

 

She wasn't Zoe Reynolds now, anyway. She was a posh English-educated German-speaking diamond-wearing contemptuous little piece of high-class bait for the Turkish mafia. Her biggest fear, apparently, was to be bored. At least that part was true. If she was bored even for a second she'd inevitably, maddeningly, think of Will.

She came home just once, to pick up some earrings, and Danny was standing in the doorway watching her with that apprehensive expression like he thought she was about to kick him. She held back a sigh. "What, Danny?"

He straightened, defensive. "How's the op?"

"Great. Expensive dresses, handsome men, wild nights out."

"You should be careful, Zoe. Those men are bastards. I've read the transcripts."

"Wouldn't be any fun if I was careful all the time, would it?"

He was looking at her like she was a stranger. "You sound like Adam," he said.

She turned back to the mirror, fixing the earrings, waiting until she heard Danny move from the doorway and stomp back into the kitchen. Ridiculous. If she sounded like anyone she sounded like Tom.

I am Persephone, she thought, Queen of the Underworld. Of course I'm having fun.

 

 

Adam agreed she was to go to Frankfurt with Celenk. He got her a suitcase expensive enough for her legend, and left it up to her which clothes to pack.

"Has this case got a false bottom too?" she asked, because if Adam wasn't making her go over every tiny detail there was no way this could be serious. "Or am I to _explore all our options_ by stabbing him with the poisoned tip of my umbrella?"

"Of course not," Adam said smoothly. "If that needs to happen, you go through Ozal. You're nowhere near the trigger."

"Murder by proxy? Right. There's no way _that_ could go wrong."

"Zoe, you're an experienced case officer. If it needs to happen – if – I've every faith you can manage it."

This is a trick, she thought a little wildly. Maybe she was meant to refuse. Maybe she was meant to come up with another solution.

"I don't understand," she said finally, hating herself for giving in. "I screwed up the last time, Adam. Why are you so bloody sure I can manage this?"

He looked at her, and she thought for an instant he was surprised. "You didn't screw up."

"I couldn't do it. I couldn't kill that scientist."

"You were ill."

"I should have been able to do it anyway. If it wasn't for Danny – "

"Zoe, that op was a success because of both of you. Danny couldn't have done it without you."

She nearly laughed, hearing an edge of hysteria. "I didn't _do_ anything. It was you on the phone to him that whole day, saying – whatever it was that you said. You convinced him to do it."

Adam shook his head. "He did it for you."

 

 

She didn't understand what he meant until Ozal was hauling her head back in the blind rage of jealousy, shoving the gun to her neck, and she was turning him into her weapon with a few simple words.

This is the right thing, she told herself. (Always it was Harry who voiced these kind of thoughts in her head.) You are making a decision to put the lives of your friends and colleagues and the British public above the life of a man who is a danger to our freedoms and values et cetera.

But the reasoning was a background voice, some sort of rote argument she'd practised in case of a doubt she didn't feel. There was no doubt. Ozal was so close she could taste his breath and she didn't give a fuck about Queen and Country. She knew now that Danny hadn't either. When if came down to that moment and what she had to do, she thought of Will.

Ozal was a bomb in her hands. She pointed him in the direction she wanted and she lit the fuse, but the idea that she was in control was laughable.

After he'd stormed out, wound up in her lies with the gun in his fist, she let her legs go from under her. She sank to the floor by his desk. She thought of Will again, and how she'd always thought truth was the highest prize she could give him. She could never tell him this.

She knew from that moment that things would go wrong.


End file.
